Volume 1 Chapter 5 - Mass production
Mass production
“A total of one hundred and thirty seven fans?” Xu Yi had a bit of a headache as he looked at the preorder form Heinz gave him. For a while, he didn’t know if he should be happy or worried.
The popularity of the Magic Fan didn’t surpass his expectations. In this kind of extremely hot weather, everyone wanted something that could cool them down a bit. However, arranging large scale Frost Arrays was too expensive for most people, so with the appearance of the Magic Fan, it satisfied most of their needs.
Thinking about it, a large scale Frost Array would require thirty gold coins to install and it would cost over a hundred gold coins each month to maintain it. Instead, compared to a Magic Fan which costs two gold coins and had a consumption of less than a gold coin each month, it was much cheaper.
Even if the effects of the Magic Fan couldn’t compare to the large scale Frost Array, it could still let people cool down a bit which was enough for them to alleviate some of this summer heat.
But no matter what, Xu Yi never thought that in just a single day, Heinz would have taken preorders for one hundred and thirty seven Magic Fans.
Moreover, according to Heinz, there were many people that didn’t have the resolve to buy it since they didn’t see the product. Once there were enough Magic Fans, the order quantity would surpass one hundred and thirty seven.
“Dear Xu, no matter what, you have to make these hundred and thirty seven Magic Fans as soon as possible! This is a matter that will affect our future reputation!” If Hienz was normally polite to Xu Yi before, now he viewed Xu Yi like a mountain of gold. His voice was filled with expectations and he even added in a few words of flattery, “Of course, if you can, make as many Magic Fans as you can! Believe me, there are definitely more people in Banta City that need Magic Fans! Even if there are no people left in Banta City, I believe that people in other cities will need them!”
Xu Yi somewhat couldn’t resist the fervor Heinz had and thinking about the seven gold coins and one silver coin Heinz gave him, excitement also filled his heart.
“Alright, I’ll do my best to complete them!”
But it was easy to agree, only it was hard to actually do something.
If he wanted to complete the preordered hundred and thirty seven Magic Fans, Xu Yi definitely couldn’t do it alone.
Even if he was very adept at making Magic Fans, for Xu Yi to do it alone, he would need at least three hours for each fan. Multiply that by one hundred and thirty seven, that was a total of four hundred and eleven hours, which would mean spending half a month on working straight!
After sending Heinz off, Xu Yi considered it. He first went to the blacksmith that he had make the outer casing for the Magic Fans and ordered another two hundred sets of outer casing before rushing back to the Camilla Magic Tower.
He used his lunch break to go meet Heinz and when he returned to the lab, his coworkers are also there.
Xu Yi under everyone’s surprised gaze brought back a large sack of cool ale which he distributed to everyone. When he came in front of Rem, he didn’t reach out to take it, rather he asked with a frown, “Hey, Xu Yi, just speak if you need something. My mother taught me that after you eat something from someone else, your mouth will become soft. If you don’t tell me what it is, I won’t drink your ale.”
Hearing Rem say this, the other people who had taken the ale and were prepared to drink it all put them down. They gathered around to look curiously at Xu Yi.
Rem’s reaction surprised Xu Yi a bit. He looked at Rem and revealed a smile. Seeing that everyone was looking at him, he raised his voice to say, “Everyone, I do have something that I need everyone’s help with. Of course, this ale is just a little gift, it doesn’t count for anything. Everyone can relax and drink it, I haven’t put any poison in it.”
Xu Yi’s relaxed words drew a wave of chuckles before he continued saying, “As for asking for everyone’s help, naturally I have a reward prepared. This can be considered outside work, is there anyone that is interested?”
“What kind of reward is it?”
“What is it that we have to do?”
“How long? Is it hard work?”
……
Everyone was focused on different things, but they were most concerned about the reward.
While they assisted Great Magician Camilla in his magical research, although they received a monthly salary, it was firmly fixed and it couldn’t be discussed. So when these coworkers learned about the rewards, many of them were interested.
“This work isn’t too hard for everyone and you won’t spend that much time on it. As for the rewards, it depends on how much work is done. The more work down, then the more rewards there will be. The specifics are like this……”
When they heard Xu Yi tell them that they only needed to inscribe a simple Revolving Wind Array, everyone let out a sigh of relief. To them, this low level Revolving Wind Array didn’t need them to spend too much time and it wasn’t that difficult for them.
When they heard from Xu Yi that each complete Revolving Wind Array could earn them ten silver coins, everyone became very excited. Even Wella whose expression hadn’t changed became a little excited.
According to what Xu Yi said, this work was very simple. They just had to make a few Revolving Wind Arrays and they could earn several gold coins. It really was relaxed work.
After Xu Yi finished speaking, of the sixteen people in the lab other than Xu Yi, there were ten of them who agreed to do this work.
The remainder who didn’t agree included Rem and Wella, as well as those ranked at the top in terms of magical power in the lab.
Xu Yi could only reveal a gentle smile and say nothing else.
He understood that these people didn’t agree mainly because they looked down on this kind of work, even looking down on him.
But this didn’t hinder him at all, being able to convince ten coworkers had already exceeded his expectations.
With the help of ten coworkers, just completing the hundred and thirty seven Magic Fans wasn’t a problem at all. They could even follow Heinz’s idea and create even more fans.
###
For the next week, Xu Yi could be considered so busy that his feet didn’t even touch the ground.
On one hand, he had to strictly monitor the quality of the fan’s outer casing made at the blacksmith.
As a high level mechanical engineer from earth, Xu Yi knew that when a product was mass produced, the most important thing was to ensure that the quality was kept constant.
However on the Sines Continent, the quality of a blacksmith’s product completely depended on their experience and craftsmanship. There was no way to control the fine details of a product, so naturally it was impossible for the product to be completely the same.
Xu Yi didn’t have a way to control this temporarily. He could only make clear marks on the blueprint and request the blacksmiths to strictly follow the design of the blueprints.
On the other hand, he needed to teach his ten coworkers how to make the Revolving Wind Array.
In the beginning, the ten coworkers disdained this matter. They thought that they didn’t need to be taught for a trivial Revolving Wind Array, they could just casually make them.
But when Xu Yi made a Revolving Wind Array in front of them, they found that this Revolving Wind Array was more complicated than they had thought. They didn’t understand most of the nodes and lines inside of the array.
One of the coworkers wasn’t convinced and randomly drew an array. However, when Xu Yi combined this array with the fan outer casing, everyone found that the wind blown out of the Magic Fan was very weak, not reaching the basic standard set.
At this time, they all obediently listened to Xu Yi’s arrangement and honestly began to study the array.
Other than focusing a large amount of energy on these two tasks, Xu Yi also couldn’t give up his work at the Camilla Magic Tower.
With Heinz’s urging of Xu Yi and the sales prospects of the Magic Fan, Xu Yi could give up working at the Magic Tower. If he just focused on selling the Magic Fan, he could guarantee that he wouldn’t lack money. So why did he make himself this busy?
Xu Yi could only laugh at this. He didn’t give Heinz the reason why he did this and continued to work at the Magic Tower each day.
After being busy for a week, five hundred Magic Fans were made in the end. After throwing away thirteen fans because they were inferior products, they were left with four hundred and eighty seven fans. Not only did they finish the preordered hundred and thirty seven fans, they had an extra three hundred and fifty fans.
Xu Yi had rented a small room during this period of time as a workshop. After finishing work at the Magic Tower, Xu Yi and his ten coworkers gathered here to work hard on the Magic Fans.
Today’s work environment was different from before. There was much more joy since after finishing the five hundred Magic Fans, Xu Yi gave them the reward he promised them.
Of the ten coworkers, each person finished around fifty Magic Arrays. According to the reward Xu Yi had promised them before, each person received five gold coins.
This amount did not seem like much, but for these low level wizards that normally didn’t have much chance to earn a lot of money, this was a solid amount of income for them.
Other than that, Xu Yi even gave each of them a Magic Fan as a bonus.
It had to be known, the Magic Fan had already become a hot product in Banta City. A normal person couldn’t buy it even if they wanted to.
In secret, the set price of two gold coins for each Magic Fan had even been raised to three gold coins! It had increased by half!
If they were to sell the Magic Fans Xu Yi gave them, it would mean gaining three more gold coins!
Seeing these young coworkers trying to hide the excitement on their faces, Xu Yi revealed a faint smile. He turned and headed in the direction of Heinz’s store.
Tomorrow was the day Heinz had set to sell large amounts of the Magic Fans. This time he had used the money from the preorder of the hundred and thirty seven fans to directly make five hundred Magic Fans. If there was a large sale tomorrow, he would definitely earn a large amount.
If there was an accident and he couldn’t sell the Magic Fans, he wouldn’t even receive his initial investment.
Success? Failure? He could only wait until tomorrow and see.